After signing up to an academic papers website during the build up to our audio paper hand in, I am repeatedly receiving new papers related to Muzak & Silence and their intermittency… “Muzak-Plus” was a phrase coined by John Cage, a decade after his mutual parts interest and disgust of Muzak led to an art theory based framework of sound art as we know it today. I failed to really drive home what this means to me in my essays last year, and in this audio paper. The concept that Muzak essentially was responsible for Sound Art is quite beautiful to me. The duality of Pop Culture and The Avante Garde, two things we normally see as opposing factions of society, but in this example of Muzak we see a very interesting cause and effect. Essentially, Background Music goes from Avant Garde with Satie to Pop Culture with Muzak, back to Avant Garde with John Cage and Silence, Background Sound… This reminds me of trends within popular music, how certain types of music become boring or cliche and new ideas of style and taste are repurposed. Things that were previously cheesy or cliche take on a new lease of life. Pop Culture exists in these cycles but does the avant garde? Time envelops the ideas that come before it, what were once very avant garde concepts become second nature to our culture. But if avant-garde is fed by a reaction to pop culture, and pop culture constantly recycles, then maybe so does the avant-garde.
There is also the technological angle, that we are witnessing new developments in technology which completely alter how human beings operate, more and more frequently. Our relationship with Sound and Music continues to develop, as the artform of recorded music develops. It brings to mind John Berger and Ways of Seeing. We talk about Fine Art and how the art work is concerned with the conceptual and arguably Sound Art is an off-shoot of that. Recorded Music has been a commercially available medium for nearly 80 odd years? So Recorded Music as a medium is still young, and the technology is still evolving. Analogue, digital, portable speaker, headphones, Internet. All these developments have fundamentally changed how we listen to sound and music in the everyday, and they’ve all happened in one century. At the point of conception of John Cage’s Silence, Recorded Music was still a new construct. Music’s developments are linked with socio-political issues; the continued appropriation of the culture of minorities has changed music as styles are copied by the cultural gatekeepers, driving the counter culture of oppressed groups to develop new music and culture for themselves. How does recorded music differ from performance? How does electronic music change performance? Is Sound Art to Recorded Music what Conceptual Art was to the Art world?
Regardless of the conceptual, Painting and illustration are still art forms that mean something, there are still new artists in those fields. The Pop album is conceptual, but new music still thrives outside of that lens. All recorded music is essentially “Canned Music”. I think for my next projects, I want to further examine the history and theory of recorded music. In order to summarise my feelings on Muzak. I think I need a basis of Art Theory knowledge I don’t currently possess. What also brings to mind is money. Recorded Music has always been a business. Whilst there was a business for composers and classical music before recorded music, folk was free and the songs travelled. I wonder if recorded music gated performances from the working class by monetising it? I am trying to stay aware that the hypothesis I’ve made here has a myriad of alternative, potentially correct answers.
In terms of upcoming Exhibition, my written work and area of study over the last year or so has been about the invisible or subliminal. My proposal is focussed on a covert, psychologically effecting sound. As someone who suffers from time to time with sensitivity to sound. Its interesting to see where my personal experience, my interest in Muzak, and my proposal for Sound Installation meet.